Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c26.40

c26.40

§ 152. This migration from the fertile lands of the Punjab to dreary Rajputana is the testimony to the love of liberty which these ‘unconquerable’ republicans bore ‘more than others,’ as one of them put it in the time of Alexander.⁴ They believed that the Yaudheya Country or the Mālava Country was wherever the Yaudheya or Mālava Gaṇa lived and lived as of yore in freedom. They would sacrifice paternal homes and lands to preserve their political self and soul. They would go to deserts but live in democratic glory and rule in parliament. It is a settled principle of Hindu politics that freedom is more important than home and is to be preserved at the cost of the latter.¹ The republics seem to have fully acted upon this principle.